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Dessert

Gold Cake

A simple cake made with powdered sugar, milk, flour, eggs, butter, mace, nutmeg, salt and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Norton, Caroline Trask · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Gold Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. 2 cups of butter.

  2. 4 cups powdered sugar.

  3. 1/2 cup of milk.

  4. Yolks of five eggs.

  5. 2 teaspoonful of baking powder.

  6. 2 cups of flour.

  7. Flavor with mace, nutmeg or vanilla.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the flavoring.

  3. Add the beaten yolks.

  4. Add part of the flour that has the salt and baking powder sifted in it.

  5. Add the milk.

  6. Add the rest of the flour.

Bake

  1. Bake from thirty to forty minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

743Calories
27 gProtein
15 gFat
121 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Norton, Caroline Trask. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter (in the method)
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness, colour and emulsifying power that holds the batter together.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as its proteins bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderise it when creamed with butter.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking that lifts the batter and makes it lighter.

The step that matters

Cream the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar together works air into the fat, which gives the batter lift. Beating too little leaves the cake dense, while adding the eggs or flour before the mixture is light and fluffy weakens that airy structure.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, flour, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, flour, egg, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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